Separating
illusion from reality doesn't usually happen all at once. What we experience as
reality changes in different stages of consciousness. For those who decide to
renounce the world completely, it's possible to leap directly toward the goal.
But even then there is no guarantee that perception has actually
shifted.

A
person may enter a monastery because the Church deems that a holy life. But if
old perceptions get dragged through the door, the monastery holds the same traps
as the material world: Ego.

Jesus
wanted his disciples to come into union with God. Any other life was steeped in
illusion. Ego keeps that illusion strong because "I, me, and mine" is so rooted
in worldly affairs. The most worthwhile life is spent discovering your spiritual
core and building your existence on it. If you do that, you will be first in the
eyes of God even if you are last in the eyes of the world.

If
you can perceive the light within, you will gain its fullness. But if you are
blind to it, you will have none. The reality you find yourself in depends on
you. The light is God's reality, the dark is the absence of
God.

Jesus
wanted to share the unity he experienced with God, and therefore he often used
the phrase abide in me. The parable of the grapevine elaborates on the point.
Jesus declares that being cut off from God is sterile and fruitless. The sap
that nourishes the vine and causes it to bear fruit is God, the source of life.
By implication, the only life that escapes death is one that connects back to
its ultimate source.

Adapted
from The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, by Deepak Chopra
(Harmony Books, 2008).

The
question of free will versus determination is huge, of course. In the one
reality, every pair of opposites is ultimately an illusion. We've already
blurred the division between good and evil and life and death. Is free will
going to turn out to be the same as determinism? A lot seems to ride on the
answer. Free will is: Independence, Self-determination, Choice, Control over
events, Future is open. Determinism is: Dependence on an outside will, Self
determined by fate, No control over events, Choices made for you, Future is
closed.

These
phrases sketch in the common understanding of what's at stake. Everything in the
free will list sounds attractive. We all want to be independent; we want to wake
up with hope that the future is open and full of endless possibilities. On the
other hand, nothing seems attractive in the determination list. Emotionally at
least, the prospect of free will has already won the
argument.

And
at a certain level nobody has to delve any deeper. If you and I are marionettes
operated by an invisible puppeteer–call him God, fate, or karma–then the strings
he's pulling are also invisible. We have little proof that we aren't making free
choices.

There
is a reason to delve deeper, however, and it centers on the word Vasana. In
Sanskrit, a Vasana is an unconscious cause. It's the software of the psyche, the
driving force that makes you do something when you think you're doing it
spontaneously.

Adapted
from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books,
2004).

The
Spirit Of Romanceby Deepak Chopra

In
our culture we are not taught to see falling in love as a spiritual event, yet
for centuries that was the accepted interpretation.

When
the question "Where does love come from?" was asked, the universal answer was
God. The lives of saints of every religion have demonstrated love in its
spiritual dimension; at the same time the humblest person who fell in love also
realized he was treading on sacred ground. Over the centuries, particularly in
the West, the divine connection was lost.

In
spiritual terms falling in love is an opening, an opportunity to step into the
timeless and stay there, to learn the ways of spirit and bring them down to
earth.

All
openings are temporary – this is not a limitation specific to falling in love.
The real question is, What should we do with the opening? The highest spiritual
qualities – those of truth, faith, trust, and compassion – grow from the tiniest
seeds of daily experience. How can we tend this fragile opening of the heart,
nurture it until it develops into more substantial stages of
growth?

We
must examine romance, the first stage in love's journey, as part of a timeless
cycle that brings greater and greater knowledge of spiritual
reality.

There
are four distinct phases of romance: attraction, infatuation, courtship, and
intimacy. Although not everyone can expect to experience them exactly the same
way, all four naturally emerge once your feeling for someone else go beyond
friendship to passionate attachment. These four phases of romance occur in a
natural, linear sequence, but at the same time they come full
circle.

Although
it happens spontaneously, falling in love isn't accidental – there are no
accidents in the spiritual life, only patterns we haven't yet
recognized.

All
love is based on the search for spirit.

Adapted
from The Path to Love, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press,
1997).

The
soul is the highest form of the self. It doesn't unfold biologically like a
child's brain and behavior. But in other respects there's an undeniable
similarity: The soul works beneath the surface, and when its work comes to
fruition, consciousness shifts.

Children
have to participate in their own development, taking an active interest in
exploring the world and finding out their own potential. In spiritual terms, the
same holds true. The seeker must take an active interest in the soul's
unfolding, or the result will be inert.

That's
why I find myself reluctant to use the word seeker, because it denies the
spontaneity of inner growth while at the same time implying that the goal is
outside the self. Seekers seem like hunters on a safari to capture the soul. The
spiritual path isn't like that. The goal is within and ever present. Better to
say that one is trying to uncover the true essence of the
self.

We
have all loved at times, felt compassion, and risen to acts of selflessness. We
know the difference between being awake and asleep, at least vaguely, and being
awake feels better. It produces a better life.

Despite
all these glimpses of a higher existence, what we lack is continuity. Episodes
come and go without taking us to a final, definitive change. The frog and the
prince inhabit the same body. The only way to find consistency is to keep
pursuing your own essence.

You
must keep in mind that the real you is love, is truth, is
God.

Even
if you could manage the Herculean task of imitating Jesus every moment of your
life, unless you find your essence, the end result would be unreal. Fortunately,
imitation isn't necessary. By removing the obstacles and resistances that hide
your essence, you reveal yourself to yourself.

Appearances
are deceiving because invisible changes are occurring beneath the surface, and
when they come to fruition, you will consciously know that something has
happened.

Adapted
from The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony
Books, 2008).

The
choice is to be conscious or not, which brings us to the possibility for
transformation. No one disputes the fact that life consists of change. But
can a person, simply by altering his or her consciousness, actually bring
about a deep transformation and not just another superficial
change?

Transformation
and change are two different things. The key to true transformation is
that nature doesn't move forward in step-by-step movements. It takes
quantum leaps all the time, and when it does, old ingredients aren't
simply recombined.

Something
new appears in creation for the first time, an emergent property. For
example, if you examine hydrogen and oxygen, they are light, gaseous,
invisible, and dry. It took a transformation for those two elements to
combine and create water, and when that happened, an entirely new set of
possibilities emerged with it, the most important from our point of view
being life itself.

Your
body, which is bonding millions of molecules every second, depends on
transformation. Breathing and digestion, to mention just two processes,
harness transformation.

Food
and air aren't just shuffled around, but, rather, undergo the exact
chemical bonding needed to keep you alive. The sugar extracted from an
orange travels to the brain and fuels a thought. The emergent property in
this case is the newness of the thought: No molecules in the history of
the universe ever combined to produce that result.

While
still remaining who you are, you can bring about a quantum leap in your
awareness, and the sign that the leap is real will be some emergent
property you never experienced in the past.

Adapted
from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books,
2004).

We
all have a deep psychological drive to keep pace with the impulse of
creation. There are needs that can and should be satisfied in the
present…Among these is every human being's central need to express
himself – to show himself to the world as he really is – in word, in
gesture, in behavior, in every genuine utterance from the baby's cry
to the artist's creation.

The
key to this inspiring affirmation is that life needs to be
satisfying in the present. It is not that easy to define "the
present," however. From one perspective the present is the thinnest
possible slice of time, the fleeting instant that allows the future
to flip-flop into the past.

From
the opposite perspective, the present is eternal, because it is
ever-renewing, like a river that is never the same
twice.

To
create paradise could mean nothing more or less than living in the
present, enjoying the happiness that is both now and forever – but
who can manage that? The boundaries that the human mind lives within
are invariably fashioned from the past.

It
is yesterday's hurt that I am defending against today, last year's
glory I want to relive, a bygone love I want to find again. The
boundary-maker who wields such enormous power over us is the
intellect, the part of the mind that judges and categorizes our
experiences.

The
number of questions that arise over the tiniest experience is awe
inspiring. Once each decision is made, it gets filed away in memory,
to serve as a reference point for future
experience.

By
endless interpreting the world in bits and pieces, we are losing it
at every instant, allowing it to slip through our fingers like sand.
To have reality that is whole and thus truly real, one must rise
above the intellect, discarding its neat slices of experience. Like
day-old bread, they only go stale anyway.

Because
we are both physical and quantum, human beings live multidimensional
lives. At this moment you are in two places at once. One is the visible,
sensual world, where your body is subject to all the forces of nature "out
there." The wind chaps your skin and the sun burns it; you will freeze to
death in winter without shelter; and the assault of germs and viruses
makes your cells sick.

But
you also occupy the quantum world, where all these things change. If you
get into the bathtub, your consciousness doesn't get wet. The limitations
of physical life count for much less in the quantum world, and often for
nothing. The cold of winter doesn't freeze your memories; the heat of a
July night doesn't make you sweat in your dreams.

Put
together all the quantum events in your cells and the sum total is your
quantum mechanical body, which operates according to its own unseen
physiology. Your quantum mechanical body is awareness in motion and is
part of the eternal field of awareness that exists at the source of
creation.

The
intelligence inside us radiates like light, crossing the border between
the quantum world and the physical world, unifying the two in a constant
subatomic dialogue. Your physical body and your quantum mechanical body
can both be called home – they are like parallel universes that you travel
between without even thinking about it.

Physical
Body: A frozen anatomical sculpture – "I" sees itself as made of cells,
tissues, and organs; confined in time and space; driven by biochemical
processes (eating, breathing, digestion, etc.)

Quantum
Mechanical Body: A river of intelligence constantly renewing itself – "I"
sees itself as made of invisible impulses of intelligence; unbounded in
time and space; driven by thoughts, feelings, wishes, memories,
etc.